Good Morning:
A pattern keeps showing up today: institutions getting squeezed over what they broadcast, show, or teach. The FCC has formally opened a license-renewal investigation of Disney’s broadcast properties, and Disney is “playing it cool” rather than fighting back (Deadline). Stephen Colbert went on the record questioning CBS’s claim that his show was canceled for purely financial reasons: “less than two years before, they were very eager for me to be signed for a long time. So, something changed” (The New York Times). And in Venice, the workaround for Russia’s pavilion is a tortured compromise — open to the press during the preview, then closed to the public for the rest of the run (Artforum).
Cory Doctorow, in a long essay, names the broader condition: enshittification has crossed from platforms into the physical world — homes, cars, the places we work and shop (Literary Review of Canada). Same diagnosis from a different angle: who gets to capture and degrade the systems we depend on.
A counterweight: the Minnesota Orchestra and its musicians settled a two-year contract months ahead of schedule, with hiring concessions to close a $2M gap (Pioneer Press).
From the recovery file: a lost copy of Caedmon’s Hymn — the oldest surviving poem in English — has turned up in a Roman library (The Guardian).
All of our stories below.
